Hal Singer & Jef Gilson - Soul Of Africa [1974]

A groundbreaking set of work from the team of Jef Gilson and Hal Singer -- a uniquely cross-cultural session recorded in the Paris scene of the 70s, and easily some of the best work ever from both musicians! Singer's probably best remembered on these shores for his older R&B tenor work of the 50s -- but sometime during the 60s, he moved over to Paris, where he cut some mighty great music -- including the legendary Paris Soul Food album, which predates this one by a few years. Gilson was always a great artist on the French scene -- a modern pianist whose work of the 60s was always fresh and new, and a player who moved into more of a world jazz sensibility as the 70s approached. Together, both players work some real magic here -- deep soul from Singers tenor, sharper tones from Gilson's piano -- and a range of weird and wonderful notes from other players who include Bernard Lubat on vibes, Jacky Samson on bass, Frank Raholison on drums, and both Del Rabenja and Gerard Rakotoarivony on percussion -- really helping the record live up to its "Africa" title! Samson's bass is especially amazing -- roundly-toned, and incredibly soulful -- as much so as his legendary work with Marco DiMarco, but pitched slightly differently here -- and titles include "The High Life", "Liberation", "Mother Africa", "Chant Inca", and "Garvey's Strut". Plus, as an added bonus the CD also features 2 incredible earlier tracks by Gilson -- material recorded with Lloyd Miller back in the 60s -- playing "micro organ" and balaphon, with a sound that's almost even more haunting than the main album. Other players include "Pierre Caron on tenor and Alain Tabar-Nouval on alto -- and titles include "Le Grand Bidou" and "Fable Of Gutenberg".

                                                                            Enjoy!

The Word - The Word [2001]

The Word is an instrumental rock/Sacred steel/gospel blues jam band. The supergroup included well-known musicians: Robert Randolph (pedal steel guitar), John Medeski (keyboards), and all three members of North Mississippi Allstars - Luther Dickinson (electric guitar), Cody Dickinson (drums, washboard), and Chris Chew (bass guitar).

The Word developed from a mutual affection for gospel music and the Sacred Steel tradition shared by Medeski and members of the North Mississippi Allstars. Chris Chew and Luther Dickinson were particularly fond of a song called "Without God" on the Sacred Steel Live! album, the only track credited to a then-unknown Robert Randolph. They contacted Randolph and recruited him to form their own Sacred Steel band, likely the first initiated by musicians outside the House of God church organization.

Their debut self-titled album, produced by Medeski and released on Ropeadope Records . The album contains a mixture of traditional gospel songs (played with instrumental arrangements) and original instrumentals written by the group.A great album!

                                                                              
                                                                               Enjoy!

Gadjo Dilo OST [1997]

 

This is true rebellious music, as in uncompromizingly authentic. It's one human being conveying his/her inner feelings to other fellow beings via the medium of music. No middlemen required or allowed.

But this soundtrack is also a celebration of life. There's the full-glass joy and enjoyment of life's little pleasures and twists of fate. But, since life as humans experience it, is hazardously strewn with half-empty situations, the album has its share of wailing and regret about life's imperfections and the "local", i.e. personal, toll it exacts on our inner balances.

But even this sorrow is celebrated and showered away in a series of songs that can't be reviewed, only listened to. This is music that can't be studied and filed away. This is music as a means of human communication, the direct lineage of the one once enjoyed by cavemen and women as they recounted daily and seasonal encounters with success and failures.

                                                             Enjoy!

 

Bendaly Family - Do You Love me?

                       

An old summer hit...

Rembetika - Songs Of The Greek Underground 1925-1947

 Rembetika is  originated during the late 19th century in Greece, becoming the folk music of the cities, sung by the social outcast, the criminal and the dispossessed, the so-called "rembetes" and "manges", in the illegal hashish taverns of the urban underground. Hard gut-wrenching songs of passion, drugs, jail, disease and death. The blues of the Greek peninsular.

Rembetika seems to be the Greek cultural equivalent to Spanish Flamenco, Portuguese Fado, to Latin American Tango/Mambo/ChaChaCha/Cumbia or to American Blues.
'Rembetika' means the folkmusic from the suburbs of Greece, the music of the outlaws. This musical phenomenon, performed by people from proletarian background, has its origins in the oppression of subversive thinking of all those people/outlaws and foreigners who moved into Greece during the 30s.

They created their own culture down in the suburbs, near the harbours of Thessaloniki and Pirus. The Rembetes loved to sing about drugs and jail, where the police put them far too often for smoking their pot. Other recurring themes were disease, passion, surviving in the suburbs and of course: dope, that is using/smoking the Arjiles (Greek dope/water pipe). The Rembetes were the true 'dopeheads' long before BeBop-God Charlie Parker or the Beatniks came along.

The story of Rembetika represents the unofficial side of Greek history: It tells the story of how the military government during the dictatorship mistreated and abused the Rembetes and their music.

Most of these wonderful songs on this double CD were recorded during the period between 1926 and 1937 when Rembetika was really 'hip' and 'big'. Then the dictator Metaxa and the Nazis took over: the lovely gais country and the whole Rembetika movement came to a complete standstill until the end of the war.

Rembetika is the music of the Greek underground. Songs about love, dope and survival.

                                            


                                                        Enjoy!    Disk 1   &   Disk 2

Hailu Mergia & The Walias - Tche Belew [1977]

During the 70's  there were recorded only three albums of instrumental music in Ethiopia.Two of them made by Mulatu Astatke.The third is this,a hidden gem!

 Walias Band  were an Ethiopian Jazz and funk band active from the early 1970s until the early 1990s. Formed by members of the Venus Band, Walias backed up many prominent singers with a hard polyrhythmic funk sound influenced by western artists like King Curtis, Junior Walker and Maceo Parker. In 1977 they recorded one of the few albums of Ethiopian instrumental music in collaboration with vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke, whose role as a bandleader and composer was also a major influence on Ethiopian popular music

                                                                               Enjoy!
 

Rico Rodriguez - Roots To The Bone [1995]

Roots to the Bone was issued in 1995 by Island Records as an extended reissue of Rico Rodriguez' most important album, Man from Wareika, with some 12" sides from the late 1970s.

Rico was musically very active during that time playing in Europe as well as in Japan. He just had releases with Jazz Jamaica and continued with his own recordings he had produced in Japan during 1994/1995. At the same time Trojan re-released his 1969 LPs, Blow Your Horn and Brixton Cat, while Island used its Reggae Refreshers series to present Rico on this album, Roots to the Bone.

The liner notes have been written by Steve Barrow as a brief history of Rico's career that lasted for half a century just as long as the development of Jamaican music as one "of the world's great popular musics". He concludes: "as one of its original creators, he has used his trombone to sing the songs of King Alpha as convincingly as any vocalist."

                                                                                Enjoy!

Charly Antolini - In The Groove [1972]

One of the funkiest records ever from Charly Antolini – the drummer who cut some mighty groovy records for MPS! This album features Charly's drums really kicking hard – actually hitting some moments that make for some tight breaks in the set, supported by instrumentation that's very much in the best MPS big band mode of the time! The mixture of heavy drums and tight horns reminds us a lot of some of the best funk from Buddy Rich – although the MPS setting here is a lot groovier – and players include Dusko Goykovich on trumpet, Armin Rusch on organ, Sigi Schwab on guitar, and Ack Van Rooyen on trumpet and flugelhorn. The whole thing's jumping – an extremely propulsive little set! 

                                                                               Enjoy!

Laszlo Hortobagyi - 6th All-India Music Conference [1990]

László Hortobágyi's music is fiction and reality at the same time. He creates musical worlds in which we can rediscover ourselves, just to forget ourselves all over again. The essence of his music is that the 20th century was not culturally influenced by the Occident, but from the Orient instead.

Just imagine that the Western and Asian polyphony had united, such as, for example, baroque organ music with phrases of Indian Ragas. A harpsichord player performing Northern Indian sitar music on his polyphonic instrument supported by a psychedelic reggae bass. Or an orthodox Slavic church choir was to sing in a classic Indian "Dhrupad" style, in the course of which repetitive gamelan music utilized compositions of Indian ragas during an electronic rock concert in Java........

Specific to this album is his unification of the music from this fictitous 20th century with the classic Indian music culture. The meticulously listed information in the booklet concerning the "Indian Music Conferences" - the first was to have taken place in the year 1916 - reads like an encyclopedia about councils that continued for years. The artist allows the "encyclicals" to flow into his music. All of this may well sound "unreal", but does the culture in the West have any other chance than to make use of the sources of this advanced civilization? "Cultures that the West has destroyed over hundreds of years and is still destroying"? (Hortobágyi)

He is pursuing these questions in the institute he founded in 1980 in Budapest, the "Gáyan Uttejak Society", which is equipped with a unique Indian and Asian music archive. Not belonging to any real genre, this music should transport our fantasy to more exciting cultural fusions in virtual realities. This music is an exciting challenge for the musical scientist; and a drug for those that want to relax.

                                

                                                                              Enjoy!

Dave Pike Set - Infra-Red [1970]

Amazing grooves from the legendary Dave Pike – one of the American vibists' few albums for the MPS label – and quite possibly the trippiest of the bunch! The set's a beautiful illustration of the freedoms that the MPS label offered American players like Pike – a chance to really open up and do his thing, and find new sides and styles he'd never expressed before on his records back home! Of course, part of the strength of the set is the group he's working with here – an ensemble that includes the amazing Volker Kreigel on guitar (and sitar!), plus JA Rettenbacher on bass and Peter Baumeister on drums. But, lest you think this is a standard quartet affair, let it be known that all players – including Pike – handle a very wide variety of instruments throughout the session – including bongos, toys, maracas, other percussion, and more – even a bit of vocalizations as well! Tracks often have a slow-building, slightly-trippy feel that's totally great – and Kreigel's work on guitar is a perfect pairing with Pike's vibes – especially as both players are clearly digging an Eastern influence for the set.

                                                                Enjoy!

The Bombay Jazz Palace [2002]

  

The Bombay Jazz Palace is a compilation album released on CD in the UK by Outcaste Records on 2002. The fourteen tracks featured on the CD are all influenced by both traditional Indian music, and various species of jazz and funk. The majority of the album's music dates from 1970s or late 60s, forming part of the Western counterculture's growing interest in Asian culture.

The first ten songs are by European and American musicians exploring the instrumentation, rhythms, and scales of Indian music, with varying degrees of authenticity. The final four songs show a kind of mirror-image, with Indian musicians taking influence from popular idioms of Western music from the 1970s.

                                                                              Enjoy!